Where Donna Karan, Chris Rock, Rashida Jones, Tyson Chandler, Mike Nichols, and Others Curl Up to Watch Films at Home

“The screening room at my house in Parrot Cay is to die for,” Donna Karan, right, with Grace Hightower, gushed at the Vanity Fair Tribeca Film Festival party. “Robert De Niro comes down, and we watch all of the Academy Award­–nominated films. It has beds and also beanbag pillows. In Parrot Cay, if you can’t sleep in it, I don’t want to have it.”

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Designer Rachel Roy, whose brother, Rajendra, happens to be the chief curator of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art, mentioned Andrew Saffir’s exclusive Cinema Society. “The room Andrew uses in the basement of the Tribeca Grand hotel is my screening room. I live close by.”

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“Screening room?” Gayle King, a late arrival, exclaimed as she rushed into the Vanity Fair party. “It’s called Loew’s Lincoln Square. I don’t have one in my apartment in New York.”

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“My God, no,” shot back Glee’s Jane Lynch, pictured here with Chanel executive Christine Dagousset. Lynch, the emcee at the FiFi Awards, which took place at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, explained, “I have a tiny house. I actually watch a TV that is in a nice cabinet. I have it in the living room, but it swivels, so I can also use it in the dining room.”

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“Screening room? No,” said actress Michelle Monaghan, also at the FiFi Awards. “It’s called my bed.”

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As one might expect, Martha Stewart’s screening room is a glorious thing: “It’s a big, big room in my house in Maine,” she said. “There are giant Belgian sofas and a big Chinese table in front with cushions on it so you can lie down. A large screen descends, and there is a projector. It’s not a movie theater per se, but it’s very good for watching TV.”

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Tyson Chandler, the NBA Defensive Player of the Year and the starting center on the gold-winning U.S. basketball team in London, said, “I’m in the process of building a man cave—I wanted it to be kind of dark, woodlike, like a barn. I would just like to feel at ease.” (Trend alert: Ron Perelman’s screening room at his Hamptons estate, the Creeks, is barnlike.)

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“I used to have a really great one in L.A.,” claimed Bourne producer Frank Marshall, right, with fellow producer Patrick Crowley. Marshall added, “It was designed by Charles Gwathmey—velour couches, a lot of cushions. You could get 30 to 40 people in there. But now we’ve moved and have a 3-D television, so we’re into TV.”

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“In Malibu, at my in-laws’, there is a full movie theater. I mean a real theater, popcorn and all,” replied designer Stacey Bendet Eisner, who is married to Michael Eisner’s son Eric. “It seats 40 or so people,” she said. “And I’ve seen a lot of great movies there. I liked watching Shrek there.”

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“My screening room is really just a back bedroom that has a big TV in it,” director Mike Nichols, left with his wife, Diane Sawyer, said after viewing Celeste and Jesse Forever. “It’s in a beautiful house on Martha’s Vineyard. We have an extra bedroom with a great big TV, and we call it the screening room.”

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“I love and revere the process of moviegoing,” said Rashida Jones, who cowrote the screenplay for Celeste and Jesse Forever. “But more than I want to admit, I watch movies on my computer.”

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“We have a TV, and we’ve been streaming films from Netflix on it,” said the designer Thakoon Panichgul, who hosted the Celeste and Jesse Forever screening, which benefited the International Rescue Committee. (He also dressed Rashida Jones that night.) “I don’t like a big TV in my living room, but I usually watch a lot of movies at my country house in upstate New York,” he said. “And we have a very long, oversized couch, for me and my dog.”

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At Bridgehampton Polo, AD spotted Francesca Beale, who donated the Francesca Beale Theater, designed by David Rockwell, to Lincoln Center. She said that at home, however, she simply watches films on a large television. And what does Beale appreciate about her eponymous theater at Lincoln Center? “It’s very comfortable,” she said. “State of the art, not crowded. It seats only 144, and there are very good visuals. They did a marvelous job.”

Beale at Southampton Hospital’s Summer Benefit.

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With her eyes glued to the polo match, antiques dealer Nina Griscom, left with her husband, real-estate broker Leonel Piraino, balked at the question. “Are you out of your mind? No. But I’ve certainly been to a few, though I wouldn’t say that they are ubiquitous.”

Piraino and Griscom at Lighthouse International’s A Posh Affair.

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At the Grey Goose-sponsored premiere of 2 Days in New York, Chris Rock, pictured here in between his costars Julie Delpy (left) and Alexia Landeau, said that he didn’t really have a screening room. “It’s just the TV room in my house,” he said. “It’s very comfortable for kids, and near the refrigerator.”

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“I have a screening room at home,” Hollywood producer Steve Tisch, shown with actress Nicole Butler, admitted on the way into the New York premiere of his film Hope Springs. Tisch, whose house appeared in AD last June, added, “It’s warm and very comfortable, with big seats. It’s reminiscent of a 1940s movie theater. The house was built in 1928, and I bought it from Bernie Brillstein, who bought it from Michael Landon, who bought it from Bill Cosby.”

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Sir Howard Stringer, the chairman of the Sony Corporation of America, indicated that he had a small Sony projector, so his home screening room has just a dozen seats. “It’s not a Hollywood projector, just a home projector,” he explained. “And the seats are from a department store. It’s intimate, as is my house.”

Stringer at the Greater Talent Network 30th Anniversary Party.

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Mimi Rogers, who plays the sexy neighbor in Hope Springs, answered, “I have a really nice 50-inch flat screen in our living room, which we never used until we put a gigantic TV in there. The flat-screen TV is way better than projecting the image.”